“Nothing outside a person that goes into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”
Mark 7:15
Disclaimer:
This article is not written as an attack on Dr. Sean Carroll or as an attempt to misrepresent his views. I have great respect for his willingness to engage thoughtfully with Christian thinkers and for the tone of mutual respect he brings to public dialogue. The purpose of this post is not to claim that Dr. Carroll intended to support biblical theism, nor to suggest that his comments constitute proof of God or the Bible. Rather, this article explores an interesting and often overlooked observation: some of the expectations he articulated about what the world should look like if theism were true bear a striking resemblance to the worldview presented in Scripture. The goal here is reflection, not accusation, and conversation rather than confrontation.
In 2015, physicist Sean Carroll debated Christian philosopher William Lane Craig on the question of God and cosmology. During that exchange, Carroll offered what he considered a serious and thoughtful critique of theism. Rather than attacking caricatures of God, he attempted something far more respectable. He asked what we should reasonably expect the world to look like if theism were actually true.²
That approach deserves credit. Too often discussions between believers and skeptics collapse into mutual misunderstanding. Carroll attempted to define criteria. If God exists, he argued, then certain features should appear in reality. If naturalism is true, we should expect something very different.²
What makes his remarks fascinating is not that he rejected theism afterward. It is that many of the things he said one would expect under theism look remarkably similar to what the Bible already presents. Not in a simplistic or scientific textbook sense, but in pattern, structure, and worldview.
This does not prove the Bible. It does not force belief. But it does raise an important question. What if the biblical God actually fits the kind of theism Carroll was expecting more than he realized?
Carroll stated that if theism were true, God should not be hard to find. Religious beliefs should not be isolated to one small group. Moral teachings should be transcendent rather than culturally arbitrary. Sacred texts should contain meaningful insight rather than being purely mythological. Human minds should not reduce cleanly to physical processes. Evil should be addressed in a coherent way. The universe should show signs of order and intelligibility.²
He contrasted all of this with what he believes naturalism predicts. Under naturalism, religions would vary widely and contradict one another. Moral systems would reflect local customs. Sacred texts would be inconsistent collections of poetry, myth, and social rules. Consciousness would track brain chemistry. Suffering would be random and purposeless.²
At first glance, many readers nod along. That sounds reasonable. Yet when we pause and compare these expectations with Scripture, something unexpected happens.
Consider Carroll’s claim that under theism religious belief should be universal rather than restricted to one tribe. This is precisely what the Bible insists from its earliest pages. The call of Abraham in Genesis is not presented as favoritism but as vocation. He is chosen so that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him.³ Israel is not portrayed as superior but as a vehicle through which God intends to reach the nations.
The prophetic literature repeatedly envisions a future where the knowledge of God spreads across the world. The Psalms call on all nations to worship. The New Testament continues this trajectory without hesitation. The earliest Christians understood their message not as tribal religion but as universal truth intended for Jew and Gentile alike. Whatever one believes about Christianity, it cannot honestly be accused of promoting a God who intended to remain hidden within one ethnic group.
Carroll also argued that under theism religious doctrines should be stable rather than endlessly adapting to social trends. Here again the biblical record is striking. Across more than a thousand years of composition, the core moral vision of Scripture remains remarkably consistent. The dignity of human life, the obligation to care for the vulnerable, the condemnation of exploitation, and the call to love one’s neighbor do not appear suddenly in the modern world. They are present from the beginning and reaffirmed repeatedly.⁴
This is not to say the Bible does not develop or deepen its understanding. It does. But development is not the same as contradiction. The moral arc of Scripture moves toward clarity without abandoning its foundation. That stability is precisely what Carroll suggested one might expect if moral authority transcends culture rather than emerging from it.
One of Carroll’s most memorable comments concerned sacred texts. If theism were true, he said, we might expect them to contain interesting information. He offered a sarcastic example. Why not tell people about germ theory. Why not tell them to wash their hands before dinner.²
The irony is that this criticism rests on an assumption that the Bible never actually makes. Scripture was never intended to be a modern medical manual. Yet the Jewish law contains extensive instructions concerning ritual washing, bodily discharges, quarantine for contagious disease, contact with corpses, and the handling of blood.⁵ These laws were not framed in scientific language because science did not yet exist. They were framed in covenantal language within an ancient world.
But the practical effect is difficult to ignore. Handwashing before meals was embedded in Jewish life long before microbiology. Isolation of contagious disease was required long before bacteria were understood. Consumption of blood was forbidden in cultures where such practices were common. Carcasses were treated with caution.
These laws were not given because ancient Israelites understood pathogens. They were given because according to the text itself God understood realities they did not. The Bible does not say why these laws worked. It simply insists they mattered.
This is precisely the category Carroll claimed would be missing. He expected sacred texts to contain either myth or moral platitudes. Instead, the Hebrew Scriptures integrate spiritual meaning with embodied practice. Clean and unclean are not moral categories but ritual states connected to life, death, and sacred space.⁶ Yet those same practices carried real world consequences that modern readers now recognize as protective.
Again, this does not prove divine inspiration. But it does undermine the claim that the Bible is merely primitive superstition. Its worldview reflects coherence rather than chaos.
Carroll also argued that under theism moral teachings should be transcendent and progressive. Sexism should be wrong. Exploitation should be wrong. Human beings should possess inherent dignity.²
This expectation once again mirrors the biblical narrative more closely than many critics assume. In the ancient Near East women were often treated as property and children as disposable. Yet Genesis declares that both male and female bear the image of God. That claim alone is morally explosive within its historical context. Laws protecting widows, orphans, and foreigners appear repeatedly. Prophets condemn societies not merely for ritual failure but for injustice, oppression, and abuse of power.⁴
Even where the Bible regulates institutions like servitude, it does so in ways that limit cruelty and affirm human worth. These texts are often criticized when removed from their historical world, but when read within that world they reveal a moral trajectory that moves consistently toward dignity rather than domination.
Carroll further suggested that if theism were true, minds should not be fully reducible to bodies. Consciousness should possess some independence from physical matter. Interestingly, this remains one of the most contested issues in philosophy of mind today. The Bible never attempts a neurological explanation of consciousness. It simply assumes that human beings are more than biological machines.⁷ ⁸
The persistence of identity, moral responsibility, and personhood is taken for granted throughout Scripture. Injury, fatigue, and weakness affect us, yet they do not exhaust who we are. This assumption aligns with what Carroll said one might expect under theism, even as modern naturalism struggles to explain consciousness in purely physical terms.⁸
Finally, Carroll addressed suffering. Under theism, he said, one might expect a coherent explanation for evil. Under naturalism, suffering would simply be random.²
The Bible does not offer simplistic answers here. It does not deny pain or pretend the world is fair. Instead, it insists that evil is real, that human freedom matters, and that suffering is not meaningless even when it is mysterious. Books like Job and the Psalms wrestle honestly with anguish rather than suppressing it.⁹ The Christian story ultimately places God himself within human suffering rather than above it.¹⁰
This too fits the expectation Carroll articulated. Theism should at least attempt to explain suffering within a moral framework. Scripture does exactly that, even while acknowledging the limits of human understanding.⁹ ¹⁰
At the end of his remarks, Carroll concluded that theism fails because it is not well defined. He argued that believers can always offer explanations after the fact. Yet this critique cuts both ways. If a worldview predicts nothing at all, it cannot be falsified. But if it predicts everything, it also cannot be tested. The real question is whether a worldview displays internal coherence and explanatory power.
What makes Carroll’s list so interesting is that he unintentionally sketched a portrait of the kind of God the Bible has described all along. Not a deity who hands down scientific textbooks, but a God who works through history, culture, moral law, embodied practice, and conscience.¹¹
This does not compel belief. It does not silence skepticism. But it does challenge a common assumption that the Bible is obviously not what one would expect if God existed.
Perhaps the more honest conclusion is this. The God of Scripture looks far more like the kind of God even skeptics expect than they often realize.
Endnotes
- ESV.
- Sean Carroll, remarks in “God and Cosmology: The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology,” debate with William Lane Craig (2015), transcript excerpt as published by Reasonable Faith. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/god-and-cosmology-the-existence-of-god-in-light-of-contemporary-cosmol
- Genesis 12:3 ESV.
- Psalm 82:3 to 4.
- Leviticus 11 to 15.
- Mark 7:1 to 23.
- Romans 2:14 to 15.
- Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- Job 38 to 42.
- N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove IL: IVP Academic, 2006).
- John Walton, The Lost World of the Torah (Downers Grove IL: IVP Academic, 2019).
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